Service Designer
- Full-time
Company Description
With a workforce of over 30,000 people, and opportunities in more than 1,000 different job categories, the City of Philadelphia is the fifth largest city in the United States and one of the largest employers in Southeastern Pennsylvania. As an employer, the City of Philadelphia operates through the guiding principles of service, integrity, respect, accountability, collaboration, diversity and inclusion. Through these principles, we strive to effectively deliver services, to resolve the challenges facing our city, and to make Philadelphia a place where all of our residents have the opportunity to reach their potential.
AGENCY DESCRIPTION
You’ll sit within the Office of Open Data and Digital Transformation, but will work in unison with the Mayor’s Office of Policy, Legislation, and Intergovernmental Affairs.
The Office of Open Data and Digital Transformation (ODDT) was created by the Office of the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) to make City services more accessible, dignified, and effective. ODDT’s approach is two-fold: 1) help departments publish open data and 2) collaborate with departments, the public, and other stakeholders to create digital services that support the success and well-being of all Philadelphians.
The Mayor’s Office of Policy, Legislation, and Intergovernmental Affairs ensures the policy and legislative priorities of the Mayor are organized, well researched, and implemented through legislative or administrative action. The Office strives to integrate evaluation, including randomized field experiments, into government action so that testing, iterating, and improving becomes standard practice. In addition, the Office works with the Mayor and City Council to set legislative and policy priorities, and works to implement best practices in partnership with key program stakeholders, and with experts both internal and external to government.
Job Description
POSITION SUMMARY
In July 2017, the City of Philadelphia was awarded a Knight Cities Challenge (KCC) award from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Knight Cities Challenge seeks ideas that help make cities more vibrant places to live and work, focusing on three drivers of city success: keeping and attracting talent, expanding opportunity, and creating a culture of civic engagement. The award to the City will fund a project titled the PHL Participatory Design Lab, spearheaded by the Office of Open Data and Digital Transformation (ODDT) and the Mayor’s Office of Policy, Legislation, and Intergovernmental Affairs. The project was selected from a pool of 4,500 applications and is the largest Knight Cities Challenge award given this year.
The award will allow the City to hire two fellows from the complementary fields of service design and behavioral economics. The team’s goal: to find ways that will improve the experiences of the public when interacting with a particular City department and their related services. The fellows, in collaboration with the broader project team and City partners, will work with residents and City staff involved with a chosen service to understand their successes and challenges in experiencing or delivering it. Through the design lab, the team will travel across the city, meet people where they are, and co-design solutions with City staff, the public, and other stakeholders.
We’re looking for a service designer to be a member of our broader service redesign project team. You’ll work closely with ODDT’s Service Design Practice Lead to execute a 13-month service redesign project—from project scoping and visioning, to design research, to opportunity definition, to ideation, piloting, and evaluating. You should be a strong communicator; meaning, your deliverables should be visually engaging, written well, and presented with ease. You should be dedicated to ethical and rigorous design practices. Your project output will lay the foundation for future design research and service design projects at the City of Philadelphia.
SALARY - Commensurate with experience
Full time employee with City benefits, freelance, or academic buyout
Please apply by August 21, 2017.
ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS
In this role, you will:
- Work with project partners to create a vision for the project and fully understand the scope of the service redesign opportunity.
- Plan and facilitate thoughtful and ethical design research with stakeholders—using a wide-range of methods like contextual inquiry, interviews, and co-design workshops.
- Synthesize research insights into well-defined opportunity areas and workstreams.
- Develop practical service redesign recommendations that consider context of use and constraints as well as balance community and organizational needs.
- Ideate, sketch, and prototype solutions in collaboration with project stakeholders.
- Develop pilot plans to transform recommendations into reality.
- Scope pilot interventions—determining the team members (e.g, technologists, visual designers, etc.) needed to move forward with an intervention.
- Plan and facilitate evaluation to determine the strengths and weaknesses of a pilot.
- Revise pilots based on evaluation.
- Create implementation plans that set teams up for long-term success.
- Co-develop all service design deliverables, like research protocol, service journeys, opportunity area reports, etc.
- Present deliverables and lead discussions around project work to stakeholders.
- Work openly and collaboratively with ODDT’s Service Design Practice Lead, the Mayor’s Office Policy Director, and broader project team members.
- Offer and take constructive feedback around project output and process.
- Develop project timelines based on tasks and level of effort to complete tasks.
- Proactively manage self and project—ensuring that deadlines and milestones are met.
- Communicate with clarity and honesty around the status of work, challenges, and successes.
- Problem solve through ambiguity and/or when challenges arise.
- Set project stakeholders up for success by setting clear expectations around their project involvement, project status, and milestones.
- Develop project materials that communicate work without jargon or pretense.
- Cultivate and maintain respectful relationships with all project stakeholders.
- Write descriptions and summaries of the PHL Participatory Design Lab projects for diverse audiences.
- Help to disseminate lessons learned, tools, and best practices across City government.
- Design and facilitate community conversations around service redesign work across Philadelphia and government.
- Excellent communicator: Ability to articulate jargon to general audiences (e.g., City departments and the public), explain the logic behind experimental decisions, craft compelling narratives about research design, write and speak clearly, and cultivate effective communication among team members.
- Relationship-builder: Ability to work with a variety of people and personalities, listen and ask questions to identify new research opportunities, and cultivate strong relationships to ensure seamless collaboration and continued project support.
- Curious: Ability to practice active listening, ask questions to get at the root of a problem, be open to receiving/giving constructive feedback, and have a sincere interest in learning new skills or growing old ones.
- Compassionate: Ability to turn research insights into actionable solutions that address people’s real needs ethically and with integrity.
- Rigorous: Driven by thoughtful, quality, and detail-oriented processes, project output, and client/team interactions.
- Organized: Demonstrated ability to manage multiple projects, estimate timelines, rework a project approach based on unforeseen challenges, work well under pressure, and set/meet reasonable deadlines.
- Action-oriented: Ability to see opportunities, navigate barriers, be self-directed, and problem solve solutions that enhance the City’s deliverables, processes, and practices.
- Broad spectrum: Knows enough about the basics of design and development processes to effectively collaborate across disciplines.
- Resilient: Ability to have a sense of humor, learn from mistakes, and/or return to work after experiencing a setback.
- Amplifier: Ability to amplify others’ strengths and successes and operate beyond ego and self-interest.
Qualifications
- A design-related degree or relevant industry experience
- 5 (+) years of professional experience in a design consultancy or equivalent position
- 5 (+) years practicing design research and service design (e.g., opportunity definition, ideation, prototyping, and evaluation)
- 5 (+) years managing project relationships with colleagues, clients, and project stakeholders
Nice-to-have skills:
- Bilingual
- Strong visual design aesthetic
- Experience with community-based design
- Experience working in the public sector on complex service challenges
Additional Information
The City of Philadelphia is interested in hiring the best possible candidate for the Service Designer role. We recognize that experience, education, and qualifications can be attained in a variety of ways and that many skill-sets are transferable. If you feel you’re a good fit, please don’t hesitate to apply.
Apply here and include:
- A one-page cover letter explaining why you’re passionate about participating in the PHL Participatory Design Lab project with the City of Philadelphia
- Resume or curriculum vitae
- Work samples that demonstrate your expertise in service design practice (research protocol, findings/recommendations reports, service journeys, and design strategy documents)